


Other Half

by nonbinarycoded



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: it's more pseudo-poetic rambling about what percy and keyleth each see in each other, this doesn't really have a plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 09:03:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarycoded/pseuds/nonbinarycoded
Summary: Keyleth and Percy need each other around, if not because they care about each other then because they balance each other.





	Other Half

Percy cares about Keyleth immensely. He turns to her when things are rough, and he knows he can always count on her being on his side (or lecturing him when his side is too out there for even her to be on it.) She is everything he wants to be.

Because everything about him feels like suffocating, smothering, drowning; it’s inky purples and blacks and dangerous, threatening reds; it’s choking on smoke and blood and bile with the weight of a heart between your teeth; it’s the apprehensive feeling that things are both as bad as they could possibly get and teetering precariously on the edge of getting immeasurably worse.

Because everything about her feels like freedom and lightheartedness and rapturous, joyous celebration; it’s vibrant greens and oranges and brilliant, dazzling yellows; it’s rolling down a hill covered in flowers and trees and not worrying what awaits at the bottom; it’s the way that stalwart, stubborn optimism outshines any insecurity or anxiety.

* * *

 

Keyleth loves Percy, like she loves all of her friends. She leans on him when she can’t possibly keep up being a leader a minute longer, and in turn he teaches her how to keep up that facade even longer still the next time (or comforts her when the weight of leadership grows too heavy for even her shoulders to bear.) He is everything she wishes she could be.

Because everything about her feels like freezing, panicking, doubting; it’s exaggerated yellows and reds and increasingly hopeless grays; it’s getting overwhelmed by choices and deferring leadership and getting your friends hurt for it; it’s the way that anxiety has a funny way of dragging you under while you try to keep treading water.

Because everything about him feels like perseverance and confidence and determination, it’s regal blues and golds and soot-covered silvers; it’s righteous fury at a wrong gone uncorrected and the single-minded resolve to fix it; it’s the way a snarky quip and a sarcastic comeback can brighten the mood just as much as any joke would.

* * *

 

They have made their homes in each other. They both think the world of the other, the way friends are bound to— but they’re absolutely not above calling each other out on their bullshit. Sometimes they’re the only ones allowed to do that. They care about each other, guide each other, help each other. They are Percy and Keyleth. Keyleth-and-Percy. And even as things end, and people drift as people are wont to do, their friendship stays. They make sure of it. They are, after all, each everything the other wants to be.


End file.
